Steve Jobs’ Reality Distortion Field Explained
If you’ve studied the life of Steve Jobs in any detail, you’ve inevitably come across the term ‘reality distortion field.’
The term is originally from Star Trek, but people who worked with Jobs came to describe his ability to bend reality to his will by the same term.
Those who view Jobs in a more favourable light describe it as an intense power of persuasion, one in which he focused on you and caused you to believe in his vision for what was possible. Others, less fond of the Apple co-founder, described it as his ability to lie, even to himself.
In Walter Isaacson's biography of Jobs, software designer Bud Tribble said of Jobs, “In his presence, reality is malleable. He can convince anyone of practically anything…” He said it was dangerous to get caught in Jobs’ reality distortion field, but he believes it was this that gave him the ability to change reality.
Macintosh team member Andy Herzfeld described it as “a confounding mélange of a charismatic rhetorical style, an indomitable will, and eagerness to bend any fact to fit the task at hand.” He described how, even when you were aware of it, it still worked, and all the methods the team came up with to thwart it were ineffective.
Steve Wozniak, who perhaps knew Jobs better than anyone else, described it as follows; “His reality distortion is when he has an illogical vision for the future, such as telling me that I could design the breakout game in only a few days. You realize it can’t be true, but he somehow makes it true.”
In a nutshell, Jobs’ reality distortion field was the ability to convince himself something was true or possible, ignore all facts and evidence to the contrary, and through sheer force of persuasion and will, make others believe it was possible, too. More often than not, doing so made it possible.
Was Steve Jobs a Wizard?
Not literally, but another thing you will be aware of if you’ve studied Jobs’ life is that he believed he was special. He told his girlfriend and the mother of his first child, Chrisann Brennan, that he was special and that he believed he was a chosen one.
Clearly, Jobs was right about being special. Ordinary Joes don’t start a business in their parent's garage after dropping out of college and live to see it become the most valuable company on earth before they die. And it wasn’t Apple that made Jobs, it was Jobs that made Apple, as evidenced by the fact the company fired him, almost died, and had to bring him back to revive it.
By all accounts, Jobs was a difficult prick who was tyrannical and stubborn to the point it drove other people mad. He had a cold side that could cause him to disregard other people, such as when he point blank ignored his firstborn daughter and refused to take responsibility for her, and also a warm, charming side, such as when he was trying to convince people of their potential and ability to get something done to a superior level.
Steve Jobs’ View on Reality
From what I’ve been able to piece together, Jobs was always different, and he never believed the rules applied to him, but he veered off the beaten path dramatically after he went to college. He began experimenting with LSD, which, as anyone who has tried it knows, shows you that reality is largely a mental construct.
Jobs was also deeply into Eastern philosophy and Zen Buddhism, meditating for hours at a time. This, again, lets you peek behind the veil of reality and see things from a larger perspective.
In his interviews with Isaacson, who he had ironically persuaded to write his biography after some resistance, Jobs told him of his travels in India and how he had learned that scientific rationalism, the default mode of Western thinking, was limited and he had learned how to use his intuition. He saw value in both but believed having one without the other was akin to being blind in one eye.
Of course, not everyone who’s into Zen and acid in their early twenties goes on to fund the most valuable company in history. Things can go the other way dramatically when you go down that path. Jobs found a way to make it work for him, and he was in exactly the right place at the right time to use his reality distortion field to start a technological revolution, the effects of which (good and bad) are still being felt today.
How to Use the Reality Distortion Field to Your Advantage
I’m not sure I’d like to be the same sort of person as Jobs in every way, but since reading his biography, I’ve been thinking about his view of reality and asking myself some questions.
What limiting beliefs do I have that are holding me back?
What boxes do I live in that someone else constructed?
What limits have I placed on myself without even realizing it?
I’m not sure yet if I can develop anything like the reality distortion field, but I do want to explore the concept more and apply it to my own business, martial arts journey, and relationships. Ask yourself the same questions and experiment to see what sort of new reality you could create by changing your beliefs and then perhaps convincing other people around you, too.
To wrap up, check out this video of Jobs explaining how he views reality as malleable, and how he realized early on that everything around him was created by people no smarter than he was. It’s a little glimpse into how he viewed reality.
